3 JULY 1915, Page 11

It is very difficult to convince the foreigner that the

Times is not the mouthpiece of the British nation and the British Government. We admit that the Times has kept its head a great deal better than the Daily Mail, but unfortunately even the Times has had some considerable lapses into sensational pessimism, and those lapses have of course been well rubbed in at Bucharest, Sofia, and Athens. Our early Victorian ladies were apt at a crisis to say : " I shall go upstairs and have a good cry." They felt instinctively that this relief should be obtained in private. We wish our newspaper pro- prietors could be induced to follow their example, and get it over upstairs instead of in the street and in full view of the neutrals and our allies.